Episode 68 - Truth and Reconciliation with Ana Avendaño by CUNY SLU

What can the UAW’s efforts to scale up new organizing efforts teach the rest of the labor movement? Former UAW chief of staff Chris Brooks shares his reflections on organizing in higher education and the auto industry with NLF Editor Chris Maisano and Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht on the latest episode of Reinventing Solidarity.

Can we have an "abundance agenda" that works for workers? The renowned Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik argues that we can - so long as we accept that manufacturing is no longer the path to good jobs, embrace new technologies to boost productivity in the service sector, and adopt a more pragmatic and experimental approach to policy making. Rodrik joins Chris Maisano on the latest episode of the SLU podcast Reinventing Solidarity to talk about his new book, Shared Prosperity in a Fractured World (Princeton University Press, 2025), and his ideas for dealing with the challenges of climate change, global poverty, and creating good jobs for working people.

Radical right-wing politics is commonly understood as a cry of the “left behind” - working-class voters who lost out in the transition to a post-industrial, services-based, and globalized economy. Philip Rathgeb, a political economist at the University of Edinburgh, challenges this view in How the Radical Right Has Changed Capitalism and Welfare in Europe and the USA (Oxford University Press, 2024). Rathgeb joins Chris Maisano on the latest episode of the SLU podcast Reinventing Solidarity to talk about his book, what differentiates the Republican Party from its right-wing counterparts elsewhere, and how his research might inform the efforts of people working to reinvent solidarity in the current moment.

Capitalism is commonly understood as an economic system, but Columbia University legal scholar Katharina Pistor argues that its more properly understood as a kind of legal regime. Pistor joins Chris Maisano on the latest episode of the SLU podcast Reinventing Solidarity to talk about her new book, The Law of Capitalism and How to Transform It, and its practical relevance to labor organizing today.

At a live event at CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, CUNY SLU Assistant Professor of Labor Studies Cameron Black moderated a lively panel discussion of Cedric de Leon’s new book, Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (University of California Press, 2025). The panel also included author and activist Bill Fletcher Jr. and Tamara Lee, Associate Professor, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University

At a live event at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, New Labor Forum Editor-at-Large Micah Uetricht interviews the journal's new Editor Chris Maisano, who introduces himself, offers some thoughts about the current state of the labor movement, and discusses his article "Does 'Left-Conservatism' Have a Future?" from the Fall 2025 issue of New Labor Forum.

In this episode of Reinventing Solidarity, we feature a keynote address from National Education Association president Becky Pringle from a conference titled "Labor and the Crisis of Democracy," hosted by the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and co-sponsored with the Cornell University Worker Institute. Pringle takes stock of the attacks on workers, free speech, and basic democratic rights, but argues, “Unions were built for this moment” of fighting back.

This episode brings together Joanna Wuest, Brittani Murray, and Jaz Brisack to discuss how queer organizers build community within their workplaces to support civil rights and social justice movements and share strategies for building power to defend workplaces and vulnerable communities, as we witness increased attacks on the rights and safety of LGBTQIA+ people, especially transgender individuals, at the same time as an unprecedented assault on all workers’ rights.

New Labor Forum’s Micah Uetricht speaks with labor organizer and former Starbucks barista Jaz Brisack about the Starbucks campaign, the practice of salting, and their new book Get on the Job and Organize: Standing Up for a Better Workplace and a Better World.